Research on what soldiers were like when they returned.

The Wounded Man Speaks
I left an ear in a dug-out
When a shell hit made us dance
And at Belleau Wood where mixing was good
I gave up a mitt for France …
They certainly spoiled my beauty
And my leg is a twisted curse
They busted me up like a mangled pup
But — THEY DID NOT BUST MY NERVE
And no pussy-footing sissy
Shall grab my one good hand …
Just to make himself feel grand
For I’m damned if I’ll be a hero
And I ain’t a helpless slob
After what I’ve stood, what is left is good
And all I want is — A JOB.
1919 poem Quoted in Stephen Garton The Cost of War,
Oxford University Press, Melbourne 1996 pages 106-107

Community action in Footscray, Victoria
There had been a period of initial uncertainty
about returning soldiers. Open embarrassment
and even disgust was expressed with drunken
and dissolute returned soldiers whose street and
domestic behaviour brought them before the
courts. In Footscray, as elsewhere, ‘the soldier
problem’ was answered by repatriation committees
which developed under middle class leadership
from citizens’ war-time Patriotic, Red Cross and
Wounded Soldiers’ organizations … By 1922
[in Footscray] there were ‘not a very large number
of local diggers out of work’.
John Lack, A History of Footscray, Hargreen Publishing
Company in conjunction with The City of Footscray, Melbourne,
1991, pages 238-9